Wisdom
I just read your recent column re-printed in ShopTalk and felt moved enough by your powerful prose to write.
Twenty-eight years ago, I was a 30-year old newlywed who'd just heard the diagnosis given by a hospital doctor to my beloved father: pancreatic cancer. He was dead within 50 days.
At my parents' home after his funeral, I found on a table the last book my father had been reading before his diagnosis-- a compendium of the teachings of the great world religions. In an effort to get as close to him as I could, I read the book and came upon a Talmudic teaching: When one laughs, one should never laugh with complete abandon, for tears are always on the horizon. And when one cries, one should never cry with abandon, for laughter is always on the horizon.
That wisdom might provide you no comfort, but it has sustained me through the last 28 years.
I pray that you and I-- and all whom we love-- will always see the laughter on the horizon until we close our eyes.
Steve Dickstein